Blockchain

SecretSwap Is the Secret Network’s Answer to DeFi Privacy

img-ads

The Secret Network, a protocol focused on privacy for decentralized finance (DeFi), has launched SecretSwap, a front-running resistant and cross-chain decentralized exchange. It is now live on the Secret Network mainnet. 

SecretSwap uses the SNIP-20 secret token standard and Secret Ethereum bridge.

“SecretSwap is the first front-running resistant, cross-chain [automated market maker]. Its architecture (being based on Secret Network) gives SecretSwap usability advantages, protects users from malicious bot activity, increases the availability of assets and keeps fees much lower than on Ethereum,” said Tor Bair,  the Secret Foundation’s executive director and chairman, in a direct message. 

DeFi privacy

According to Bair, SecretSwap works similarly to other AMMs, such as Uniswap or SushiSwap. However, because it’s based on privacy-preserving “secret” smart contracts, users are protected against front-running bots and other types of malicious activity.

Front-running is the act of getting a transaction first in line in the execution queue, right before a known future transaction occurs. Bots executing such front-running operations by paying slightly higher gas fees have been a sticking point for DeFi, and multiple projects have been developing privacy solutions to address this issue. 

“Under the surface of every transaction that finds its way to the blockchain, there are fierce wars over every bit of profit,” said Alex Manuskin, a blockchain researcher at ZenGo who has looked at front-running in an earlier interview with CoinDesk. 

“If you happened to come across an arbitrage opportunity, or even notice an error in some contract, it is very likely that it will be hard to extract this value without either operating a bot yourself to fend off the front-runners, connecting to and paying a miner to conceal your golden goose transaction, or making the transaction complex enough for the front-runners to not notice.”

The Secret Network’s private liquidity hub is one of the first to launch on mainnet, following the launch of their Ethereum bridge. That bridge lets assets be transferred between Ethereum and the Secret Network privately and essentially offers interoperability between the protocols. 

Secret contracts

According to a Secret Network blog post that covered the launch of SecretSwap on testnet, the advantage of SecretSwap lies in secret contracts and the SNIP-20 token standard. 

Secret contracts allow encrypted data to be used without revealing it on a public blockchain, or even to nodes themselves. 

“Since inputs to the swap contract are encrypted, no malicious actor or miner can front-run transactions waiting in the mempool at the expense of honest users,” reads the blog post. “Network fees for interacting with SecretSwap are paid in SCRT (like all other secret contracts).”

The AMM supports pools for secret tokens supported on the Ethereum Bridge as well as those that will be supported in the future. 

“We have $50 million in Ethereum assets already locked as secret tokens on our network,” said Bair. 

Anonymous NFT auctions?

Earlier this month, the networks launched the Secret Auction web3 app, a crypto auction platform with privacy for DeFi by default. The app lets users create or bid on auctions for any SNIP-20 token (Secret Token) with minimal fees and privacy protections throughout the process. 

“Bids are completely secret: Bidders can’t see if there are any other bids, and sellers can only know if there have been any bids, but not how many,” reads a blog post on the subject. 

“Additionally, until the auction is closed, no price info about any bids is known by anyone, and after the auction is closed the only information revealed is the winning bid. This is the first time this has been possible on a blockchain application without a trusted third party – another first for Secret Network.”

There is also a nonfungible token (NFT) standard in development for the Secret Network as NFTs take hold in the mainstream audience, such as one of National Basketball Association star Zion Williamson recently being sold for $100,000 and garnering an article from ESPN. 

img-ads

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

You may also like

Bitcoin Blockchain

Async programmable art platform secures over $2M in seed funding

Async Art, a Silicon Valley nonfungible token platform, has secured over $2 million in seed funding from at least 10 investors, highlighting the growing value proposition of programmable art. 

The company announced the new raise on Wednesday, highlighting Async’s rapid growth since its February 2020 launch. In its first year of operations, Async generated over $1 million in art sales and launched a smart TV app to display digital art.

Although the company didn’t specify how it would use the funds, it indicated that onboarding new users and creating new displays were the primary focus. Async is also looking to expand its job openings. Currently, its LinkedIn page has openings for a community manager and application developer.

At least 10 investors participated in the seed round: Lemniscap, Galaxy Interactive, Signum Growth Capital, Semantic, Blue Wire Capital, CollabCurrency, Inflection, Divergence Ventures, the LAO and…

View More Article
Bitcoin Policy & Regulation Tech

BlackRock has started to ‘dabble’ in crypto, says CIO

Rick Rieder, chief investment officer at BlackRock Financial Management, hinted that the firm ha already invested a percentage of its portfolio into crypto.

In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday, Rieder said BlackRock — with more than $8.6 trillion in assets under management — has “started to dabble a bit” into crypto investments. The chief investment officer described the volatility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) as “extraordinary” but acknowledged that many investors were looking for “places that appreciate under the assumption that inflation moves higher as debts are building.”

“Holding some portion of what you hold in cash in things like crypto seems to make some sense to me, but I wouldn’t espouse a certain allocation or target holding,” said Reider. “My sense is the technology has evolved and the regulations have evolved to the point where a number of people find it…

View More Article
Bitcoin Latest Opinion

Price analysis 2/17: BTC, ETH, DOT, ADA, XRP, BNB, LTC, BCH, LINK, XLM

Bitcoin (BTC) is gradually gaining ground on gold, the traditional store of value. Data shows that one ounce of gold can only buy 0.0352 Bitcoin as of Feb. 17, the lowest amount of BTC ever. This shows that Bitcoin has been rewarding its investors much more than gold.

Bitcoin has massively outperformed gold over various time frames. Even if the latest one-year data is considered, Bitcoin’s risk-adjusted return is 270%, while gold’s is only 24% as of Dec. 28, 2020.

The result further skews hugely in favor of Bitcoin if longer time frames of four years or eight years are compared.

In the past few years, Bitcoin has matured as an asset class. During the previous bull run in 2017, Bitcoin’s 60-day volatility was at 32%. But in the current bull phase, Bitcoin has recorded lower volatility at 14.25%. Analysts believe that as institutional…

View More Article
Bitcoin Blockchain Business Markets Opinion Policy & Regulation

Tesla, Bitcoin and the crypto space: The show Musk go on? Experts answer

While 2020 was a significant year for Bitcoin (BTC), the just-begun year of 2021 is already full of great surprises. On Feb. 8, Bitcoin’s price jumped by almost $3,000 in minutes, then it surged 20% in 24 hours — all due to the news of Elon Musk’s Tesla allocating $1.5 billion of its balance sheet to BTC. 

The same week, the oldest bank in the United States, Bank of New York Mellon, announced plans to hold, transfer and issue Bitcoin. Mastercard is also planning to support cryptocurrencies in 2021 for its almost 1 billion users. And SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, commonly referred to as “Crypto Mom” in the crypto community, even underlined the urgent necessity for regulatory clarity due to the recent events in the space.

With PayPal, Tesla, Mastercard, BNY Mellon and others entering the cryptosphere, isn’t it becoming more clear than ever…

View More Article
Investment

US charges three North Korean hackers over crypto attacks and WannaCry ransomware

On Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice announced charges against three North Korean hacker. 

Making the announcement, Assistant Attorney General John Demers condemned the North Korean program, the most famous branch of which is Lazarus Group. Demers said:

“North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world’s leading bank robbers.”

With a country largely sequestered from the international economy, North Korea’s hacking program has been a critical source of revenue. Many have linked hacking income from sources like the WannaCry malware and crypto exchange Coincheck with the nuclear weapons program. Demers elaborated:

“The DPRK cyber threat has followed the money and turned its revenue generation sights on the most cutting edge aspects of international finance, including through the theft of cryptocurrency from exchanges and other financial institutions.”

North Korea’s hacking program has been the subject of extensive…

View More Article
Bitcoin Business

MicroStrategy raising $600M…. no, $900M to buy more Bitcoin

Following a Tuesday announcement that MicroStrategy would be planning to buy $600 million in Bitcoin (BTC) through a sale of convertible notes, the business intelligence firm has upped the ante by another $300 million.

MicroStrategy said on Wednesday it would be selling $900 million in convertible senior notes due in 2027 in a private offering to qualified institutional buyers. According to the firm’s estimates, the proceeds of the sale will be roughly $879 million. It added, however, that it could be as high as $1 billion “if the initial purchasers exercise in full their option to purchase additional notes.”

The business intelligence firm said it expected to close the offering on Friday, at which time it would “acquire additional Bitcoin.” With the price of Bitcoin reaching an all-time high of more than $51,000 on Wednesday, MicroStrategy could soon have an additional 19,000 BTC in its coffers.

MicroStrategy’s…

View More Article
%d bloggers like this: